[jmull]

I see. I can see the issue.

But it comes down to this: if a user explicitly kills an app, should it keep running in the background?

If the answer is "yes", then what you're really saying is users shouldn't be able to kill apps if the app doesn't want to be killed.

I get that some users don't know what killing an app means but do it anyway for some reason.

But that's not a problem with background refresh. E.g., maybe iOS could warn/explain about the implications of killing an app (with a checkbox so you can opt-out of further warnings).

Edit: just realized I left the word “not” out just above, which reverses it’s meaning

[untog]

The problem is that nothing is self-evident. An app that sends remote notifications to notify you of an e-mail looks exactly the same as one that locally generates a notification as a result of background processing. But the former will work after being swiped away from the app switcher and the latter won't.

I just don't think it's reasonable to expect the average use to "get" that.

[jmull]

I agree the users shouldn’t be the ones worrying about the subtlties. It’s we developers.